Reversing the position of red and blue on the 4th of July socks produced this:

In the kitchen while it's raining Outdoors next day

This image was taken in the kitchen during a rainstorm, so the colors are not as "clean" as they should be, but you get the idea. (If it's sunny sometime in the next few days, I'll replace the picture above with one taken outside . EDIT: And yes, there's the sunlight picture.) The overall impression is, to me, quite different than that in the 4th of July socks. Where the color is makes a bigger difference than I expected--but this may be just my perception of it.

On the RW&B socks, the red is the same red as the 4th of July pair: Ella rae Classic red #31, same dye lot. The blue is Ella rae Classic navy blue, #85 (no, it's not black. Fiddling with the adjustments in my photo software never got both the red and the blue to show "right" but I'll bet they do better with an outdoor image on a sunny day. It really does match pretty well, considering different brand and almost 50 years of age between the two blues.)

This completes my project "2015 Short Socks" on Ravelry. And because I am happy with them, and want to show off, here they all are, one picture after another (on a brighter day outside, I'll arrange them in a group and swap out these pictures plural for that one singular.

Summer Beach Attitude Adjustment Summer Sunshine

4th of July Mother's Colors

Mountain Vacation Red, White, and Blue

Since making the "crew" socks (taller ribbed cuffs) from new balls of yarn results in leftovers, the making of striped socks will probably never end. I foresee a lot more stripes in my future. And maybe some fancier colorwork too, though stripes are a lot of fun. I've made two pairs of the crew socks with stripes:

The blue & green ones had a solid blue cuff, but the red and blue ones had striped cuffs as well as feet.

Glad you enjoy them. When I first tried a stripe (on the first short sock) I was thinking only of using up the yarn left over from pairs of taller socks--I had no idea they could be such fun to play with in terms of mixing colors, etc.

Re: These are adorbs!

The Cascade 220 white yarn really is a very *white* white, more like an acrylic white yarn, but I think they just bleached the heck out of it. Also, sunlight...it just glows in the sunlight. It does have a different feel to the other Cascade 220 yarns, and has broken several times, another reason I think it may be overbleached. I may try to find the creamier white I used in the earlier short socks this year (Before the 4th of July ones) because of that, but I still have a skein of the WHITE white to use up. It does make other colors sparkle.

My mother would have agreed with you . She and I were not entirely on the same page when it came to color. She was much more influenced by social conventions, notions of what proper girls/women should wear. I understand that now; she was in a precarious position as a divorcee and her safety and mine depended on her willingness to conform. I was always intensely affected by color, and thus resistant to being pushed to colors that made me feel sick, sad, unsettled. She had different sensitivities and didn't accept that mine were anything but foolishness which she indulged often enough, but not in the matter of socks.

That's why she knit me only two pairs of socks. I had asked for a red pair (again) for the second pair (first pair was royal blue--OK); she knit me a pea-green pair. I don't like pea-green (there are, obviously, greens I do like) and thought she was well aware of that. She was right that I was rude in saying so. I was right in that she was at the least inconsiderate in choosing a color she had reason to know I didn't like and never wore. She was incensed that I didn't take proper care of the green socks and they got a hole in them early on. I hated wearing them; every time they were on my feet I felt sick looking down at them. I didn't try to explain that because I'd tried talking about how colors affected me years earlier to no avail. We came to a tacit understanding that knitting and socks would not be mentioned together again.

Forty years later I started making my own socks. Not surprisingly, the first pair (and fourth pair, and quite a few later pairs) were red. I will *always* have a pair of red socks to wear (though I don't wear red socks every day--other colors are also good.) Fortunately for me, I no longer have to worry about her opinion of my choices. I can honor her with a pair that is mostly in her colors and partly knit of yarn she had. She doesn't have to look at the rest. (I do hear her comments in my head, of course.)

So I appreciate the comments of those who like the "Mother's Colors" socks and recognize that what colors someone likes matters, if you're knitting for them. Those socks are for her memory. I wear them with loving thoughts of her, but without real enjoyment of the colors.